The new world of art and materials

I thought this was a quite remarkable book of contemporary furniture from the last decade or so. Looking through the book I was amazed at how many ways artists could interpret a  table and seating and how many different materials have been chosen to reveal their ideas. The work of 150 artists and studios is divided into twelve sections and these could give you an idea of the scope of the book. Starting with the late twentieth century Explorers and then into the twenty-first century with Nature; Wood; Metal, Melded; Geometric; Biomorphic; Concept; Expressing; Tongue in cheek; Ecology; Process.

The 'Melded' pages have some intriguing furniture with combined materials. Brodie Neill on page 106 created a beautiful chaise longue carved from plastic, acrylic and wood, highly polished to reveal various contours of the materials. Marcin Rusak (page 175) has combined real flowers and leaves with white resin to create a one-piece table and seating. The 'Biomorphic' section reveals some curving wonderful shapes like Gildas Berthelot's low table (page 212) made from black walnut. 'Tongue in cheek' shows that modern furniture can have an element of whimsey. Wendy Maruyama designed the Micky Mackintosh (page 277) chair based on the high back of a Charles Rennie Mackintosh original but with two large Mickey Mouse ears at the top. This section has one of my favourites in the book, Stelios Mousarris's Wave City coffee table. It started out as a landscape piece of wood and he bent one end into a huge curve to create the top and base but then fixed dozens of wooden skyscrapers and other buildings on the underside of the table, round the curve and on the base. It does look quite stunning (and probably a super dust catcher, too).  The last section in the book, 'Interiors' has photos of some room settings in dealers' homes that show some of the pieces illustrated in earlier pages. 

With 680 photos this is a very comprehensive look at what artists who specialise in furniture design are working on today. These are all original pieces or very limited editions. The last twenty-six pages include interesting biographies of the artists, a directory of galleries and museums and an index. Worth saying also that the book is beautifully designed and printed.